


The Other Son

by aldiara



Category: Alles was zaehlt
Genre: Alles was zählt - Freeform, Angst, Character Study, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-01
Updated: 2010-10-01
Packaged: 2017-10-12 08:40:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/123017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aldiara/pseuds/aldiara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A child she can approve of is a child she can love, and she doesn't think it unreasonable that love, like any other thing in the world, should be earned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Other Son

Veronika Wagner believes in doing things neatly. She believes in patterns and paths that should be followed, rules that should be obeyed, and a balance that should be maintained.

The one time she veered from her path of reason, compelled by youthful exuberance and fascination with a pair of pale blue eyes in a smiling dark face, she soon found it confirmed, once and for all, that that kind of passion, that kind of recklessness can only end in resignation and regret. So she set it aside, excised it firmly from her life, and seventeen years later, she feels vexed by the feeling that she is still paying for that one time that she slipped.

In general, she’s done well for herself. She’s got a good career, a good reputation, a good social life, a good man by her side, a child she can be proud of: solemn and sweet-mannered and in love with learning. The other…

The other is a problem.

She has never known what to do with Deniz; has never understood what fires him so firmly in a direction utterly opposed to everything she is and believes in. Even when he was little, she had these odd moments where she would see him caught unawares at some self-invented game, with a wild little grin tugging at the corners of his generous mouth, and she would look at him and feel like he wasn’t hers, this darkly beautiful, wild child that bears no trace of resemblance to herself.

At first, she was bemused; then, as the years went by and he started to emerge from the chrysalis of early childhood into his own person, she felt increasingly like she was hosting a stranger. For a while, she thought it was his father’s influence, or Turkey’s: tendrils of something foreign weaving their way far across time and distance to sink roots into this boy she’s tried so hard to make into someone proper. But as time went by, as he grew impossibly tall and his shoulders wide, she came to believe that it was more than that, or something else entirely. It isn’t the culture of his forebears, not his father’s crescent moon stamped all over his features and his character. It isn’t a hybrid of two worlds, either, not a convenient marriage of her cool rationality and Marian’s humorous fire. Instead, she’s watched him grow into someone who seems, to her, quite separate from the both of them, a person entirely self-made and self-muddled, as if he’s stubbornly insisting on fashioning his own personality but has refused to look at the instruction manual, so it comes out all flawed and ill-fitting.

To her, his mother, it feels like a betrayal. She doesn’t hold with sentimental notions of blood being stronger than water; she doesn’t believe in unconditional things. A child she can approve of is a child she can love, and she doesn’t think it unreasonable that love, like any other thing in the world, should be earned.

It’s different with serious little Alkim, with his silky, dark curls and cautious, hazel-eyed smile. She’s never been the coddling type, but at least with him she can feel like he’s hers. Their minds work the same way: he brings home a good grade, and she gives him a hug. It’s a reward for services rendered, yes, but it doesn’t make the hug any less genuine, or her less appreciative of the solid little warmth of the thin body in her arms.

Deniz doesn’t seem to understand this simple exchange of affection and expectations fulfilled. Deniz, when he was younger, would throw himself at her with all the exuberance of an untrained puppy, demanding attention, never giving anything in return; growing cocky when she gave him what he wanted and sullen when she didn’t.

Even now, she often feels like Alkim, six years his brother’s junior, is actually the older one, the responsible child, the one who’s capable of grasping such simple concepts as the fact that to displease her means to invite rejection, when all it makes Deniz do is to challenge her further, anger her more, dare her to love him in spite of his numerous transgressions. Veronika resents the silent implication that she is supposed to do this – not just from him, from everyone: from the football mothers with their packed lunches and frowns; from the teachers who call her with complaints and reproach ill-concealed underneath professional impersonality; occasionally, even from her boyfriend, who looks from Deniz to her with raised brows that clearly say, _You should have fixed him_.

She knows some of these people call her cold; unnatural, even, not what a mother should be. It annoys her that they would presume to judge her, when it isn’t them who have to live with a rambunctious foreigner in their house, not them who have to deal with years of frustration and always the niggling feeling at the back of her head that somehow she’s been cheated of the son he ought to be: someone to lean on, someone responsible and appreciative of the sacrifices that she’s made.

Instead, she waits, and watches as Deniz continues to flaunt the crooked pattern that he’s made of himself. She feels herself growing cooler and more distant even as he grows wilder, by turns pleading and insolent but always, always something other than she wishes him to be; and somewhere inside her is a deep chasm of resentment at a world that considers it unacceptable to give up on a cause gone bad if that cause is your child.

Until at last, one morning in July, the phone rings and she hears her ex-husband’s voice drifting down the line. Veronika exchanges barbs with him even as she pulls on her dressing gown, the phone trapped between her shoulder and her ear; she pads down the hallway and opens the door to the pit that is Deniz’s room to confirm his absence. And the first thing she feels isn’t chagrin, or anger, or shame: some of these will come later, and she will analyse them reasonably and disperse them as well as she can. The first thing she feels is relief, pure and simple, and the knowledge that here, finally, is her chance to be free. To fix the pattern of her life, and untangle it from the thread that wouldn’t fit.


End file.
